Personal account: autobiography as an emancipatory learning experience
Once upon a time I learned that “it is only possible to think and learn what it is also possible to talk about” (Alves, 2000, p. 100). Based on a then recent belief that “lives are lived through time but made intelligible through narrative” (Erben, 2000, p. 383), it was by a tentative effort to translate into words my entire journey as a learner that I realised the power of an autobiographic narrative to make sense of lived experiences, and to unfold events that otherwise would remain unintelligible. Furthermore, from that attempt emerged a “refiguration of time by narrative” (Ricoeur and Valdés, 1991, p.100) and an intuitive awareness that through “a fictive experience that has an imaginary world” (Ricoeur and Valdés, 1991, p.100) I could translate my struggles as a child, which survived somehow in my identity as a woman.
Challenged by the Argentinean psycho-pedagogue Alicia Fernández to write an autobiography focused on my learning experiences, I spent one year working with my memories, myths, family stories, and my desire to translate my experiences into a story. The result was a fictional short story in which I am the adult narrator and the child character at the same time. The mode I created consisted of a number of visits that the child character received from the adult narrator, which were described and analysed reflexively. The hypothetical movements that emerged from the story construction forced me to sort of travel back in time using the information I had, together with the new knowledge gained by investigative conversations that I had with my mother about my dead father. The written story was knitted by imagination.
That experience was a turning point for me, both professionally and personally. The result was an amazing tale that was shared first in a conference of Psycho-pedagogues, subsequently with close friends, later with colleagues and recently with my family. The whole experience was powerful. From the early reflections to the late stage of the writing process, from the first experience of sharing and receiving feedback to the sensitive experience to share it openly with those who shared most of the lived experiences, my family. Since then an unpretentious use of autobiography marked all my professional initiatives, and in some aspects my personal life.
This enriching experience confirmed to me that “the intelligences sleep. All attempts to awake them through the use of force or coercion are useless. The intelligences only understand the appeal of the argument of the desire: they are tools and toys of the desire” (Alves, 2000, p. 131), because desire was the moving force to my attempt to write my story, and as well the focal point in the learning process narrated. For me there is no doubt that “as human beings we learn a great deal from re-telling stories, creating new meanings and deepening existing ones” (Etherington, 2004, p. 55).
Conclusion: how I regard my understanding of narrative as an educative process
The argument that narrative and education share similarities and fundamentals, leads me to the assumption that educational research can benefit strongly from narrative because “we are always making sense of our lives in stories of one form or another” (Clough, 2002, p. 13), moreover, educational research can be done and reported through narrative. On one hand narrative inquiry has the potential to opens up a wider perception of the others’ life, encouraging the reflexive attitude of the researcher, since “stories allow the reader to enter into the narrator’s experience and invite questions and hypotheses that might lead to further inquiry” (Etherington, 2004, p. 76). On the other hand “narrative inquiry carries more of a sense of continual reformulation of an inquiry than it does a sense of problem definition and solution” (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000, 124). Taking those arguments into account, the employment of narrative inquiry can be a fruitful methodology for educational research, especially considering that “narrative inquiries are always strongly autobiographical” (Clandinin and Connelly, 2000 , p. 121). Having experienced an autobiographical challenge I developed a awareness that agrees with Erben when he says that “for biographical research, time and its passage must be seen as the inescapable feature of human life” (1998, p.13).
In addition to the notion of narrative as stories, it is important to consider that “the idea of narrative, certainly in the study of biographical research, is resistant to incorporation into discourse or discourse analysis since the emphasis is not only on plot and story (and the consideration of time) but also on individuality and the interplay between the individual and the social” (Roberts, 2001, p. 119). Here the argument about the interplay between the person and the others concurs with arguments presented in earlier sections regarding the ideas of various authors in the domain of education, such as Dewey, Vygotsky, Fernández, and others. The use of narratives in research is likely to promote and take the most of the interactive potential of storytelling as a basic human activity. The complexity of the problems faced by learners and teachers in the context of education can be uncovered through a range of genres of narrative, not only historical narratives but also fictional ones, because “the fictionalization of educational experience offers researchers the opportunity to import fragments of data from various real events in order to speak to the heart of social consciousness – thus providing the protection of anonymity to the research participants without stripping away the rawness of real happenings” (Clough, 2002, p.8).
This paper aimed to discuss an understanding of narrative as an educative process, which was made chiefly based on my own perspective of it, taking into account the literature in the field. It is known that storytelling is not a new strategy used to teach, ancient societies used stories to teach values, beliefs and customs. Story is a powerful form in which we make sense of the world, stories enact social change and storytelling is a form of narrative inquiry. In terms of my own research, I am interested in developing and deepen my understanding of narrative research, and in how to translate “life’s realities as lived by men and women into story, and doing in such a way as still to be believed” (Clough, 2002, p. 64) and to promote social justice (Griffiths, 1998), namely in the area of inclusive education. If “cultures can be written through lives” (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998, p. 204), can we ague that those written cultures can be challenged by the life stories in a dialectical exchange? How might narrative accounts contribute to the construction of a social/collective identity? To what extend autobiographies can encourage and create change?
Narrative and educative process: a reflection on possible intersections
Introduction: ‘I have read your romance on the subject of education’
1. Narrative and Education: comparing the concepts
1.1. Examining the concept of education
1.2. Examining the concept of narrative
2. Narrative and Education: four non-arbitrary intersections
2.1. Principle of authorship
2.2. Principle of temporal continuity
2.3. Principle of empowerment
2.4. Principle of Interaction through communication
3. Conclusion: beginning and finishing from my standpoint
3.1. Personal account: autobiography as an emancipatory learning experience
3.2. Conclusion: how I regard my understanding of narrative as an educative process